People often challenge biblical (young-earth) creationists with comments along the lines of,
“I don’t believe evolution, but couldn’t God have taken billions of years to create?”
Some claim that an emphasis on six literal days, 6,000 years ago even keeps people away from the faith, so why do we focus on something that is not a salvation issue?
It is not the timescale in and of itself that is the important issue, but whether the Bible actually means what it plainly says. In other words, it goes to the heart of the trustworthiness of Scripture. As such, compromising with long ages also severely undermines the whole Gospel message, thereby creating crises of faith for many, as well as huge problems with evangelism.
THE IMPLICATIONS OF A LONG-AGE TIMESCALE
Most do not understand where the concept of an old earth came from. It is certainly not an idea found anywhere in Scripture. In 1830, Charles Lyell, a Scottish lawyer, released his book Principles of Geology. He stated that one of his aims was to “free the science [of geology] from Moses.”‘ He believed that processes observed in the present must be used to explain the geological history of the earth. So, if we currently see rivers depositing sediments at an average rate of 1 mm (4/100 of an inch) per year, then a layer of sedimentary rock, such as sandstone, which is 1,000 m (3,300 ft) thick, must have taken about a million years to form. This ‘present is the key to the past’ assumption (and its variants) is a cornerstone of modern geology and is often called uniformitarianism. However, it is ‘willingly ignorant’ (2 Peter 3:5) of a viable alternative mechanism for such deposition, as recorded in the Bible’s history (Noah’s Flood).
Uniformitarianism creates massive theological problems. Those rock layers contain not only rocks or granules, but also fossils, which are indisputable evidence of death, carnivory, disease and suffering. Biblically, we understand that these things only began to happen after the Fall. The implication of long-age belief is that God ordained death before the Fall of man—before there was even a man to sin—but the Bible clearly states that it was Adam’s actions that brought death into the world (Romans 5:12), The Bible’s detailed genealogies from Christ all the way back to Adam (who was made “from the beginning of creation” (Mark 10:6)) leave no room for millions of years.
Evolution’s ‘survival of the fittest’ is a cruel and random process that requires billions of ‘unfit’ organisms to die. So how could a loving God use it as His method of creation to bring about human beings? As His image-bearers, we would be standing on top of layers upon layers of rocks filled with the remains of billions of dead things, which God, proclaimed to be “very good” at the end of the Creation Week (Genesis 1:31). Long ages don’t fit in the biblical view, whether or not someone believes in evolution along with it. The New Testament is clear that there was no death before Adam. Romans 5:12 says, “sin came into the world through one man; and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned”.
THE ‘GOSPEL’ OF AN OLD EARTH
Some alleged ‘experts’ try to sidestep this by saying that the Fall only caused human death and disease. This cannot be true. For one thing, Romans 8:19-22 clearly teaches that the curse of death and suffering following Adam’s Fall affected “the whole creation”, i.e. the entire physical universe.
In addition, there are human remains that are claimed to be hundreds of thousands of years old, which is well before any possible biblical date for Adam of around 6,000 years ago. Some see these as ‘pre-Adamites’ soulless non-human animals—but these skeletons fall within the normal range of human variation. Neandertals, for example, show signs of art, culture, and even religion, and recent sequencing of actual Neandertal DNA shows that many of us living today carry Neandertal genes. To call them ‘non-human animals’ seems entirely contrived to salvage the long-age belief system.
To distort the interpretation of Romans 5:12-21 to say that death was limited to humans would mean that Adam’s sin only brought a partial Fall to God’s Creation; yet Romans 8:19-22 tells us the whole creation groans under the weight of sin and is subjected to futility. Genesis 3:17-19 tells us that the very ground was cursed so that it produced thorns and thistles. If only a partial Fall occurred, then why will God destroy all creation (“the heavens and earth”) to bring about a new one, instead of a partial restoration? Why not just restore humans if the rest of creation is still “very good”?
DEATH – THE LAST ENEMY
A central part of the Gospel is that death is the “last enemy to be destroyed” (1 Corinthians 15:26). Death intruded into a perfect world because of sin, and it is so serious that Jesus’ victory over death cannot be entirely manifested while there is a single believer in the grave. Are we expected to believe that something which the Bible authors described as an enemy was used or overseen by God for millions of years and was called “very good”?
The Gospel majors on the hope we have in this Resurrection and restoration of the creation to its original perfect state. The Bible is clear about the new heavens and earth as a place where there is no carnivory, no death, no suffering, and no sin (Isaiah 65:17-25; Revelation 21:1-5). How can this be called a restoration if such a state never existed?
What did Jesus come to save us from, if not death, suffering, sin, and separation from God? What do we do with passages like Hebrews 9:22, which says “under the law almost everything is is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins”, if death and bloodshed were occurring as ‘natural’ processes for millions of years before Adam?
If death is natural, why do we mourn it so? God creating via ‘death’ robs the Gospel of its power and Jesus’ sacrifice of its significance.
THE EFFECT ON THE CHURCH
People who profess Christianity but accept a billions-of-years timescale will have a much harder time defending their faith, because it is clearly not what the Bible teaches. One of the major stumbling blocks to faith is the question: “Why does a good God allow all the death and suffering in the world?” Such ‘old earth’ believers cannot adequately explain the origin of death and suffering as a reaction to human sin.
If belief in the Bible as plainly written strengthens one’s ability to explain the Gospel and the entrance of death into the world due to the Fall, and compromise can have such damaging effects, why should anyone compromise? Practically every Christian leader and theologian who lays out his reasons for believing in long ages rather than the biblical timescale has to admit that Genesis—when read at face value, in the Hebrew as well as the English translations—teaches a straightforward creation in six normal-days. They must also acknowledge that this is powerfully backed up by Exodus 20:11, part of the Ten Commandments, which shows that the Genesis days were understood to be normal-length days, with no room for either millions of years or gaps in the text in which to insert them. Unfortunately, they defer to a non-Christian interpretation of the world and its millions of years. Tragically, it sounds like another case of ‘Did God really say?’
INCONSISTENT CHRISTIANITY?
While it is possible to be a Christian and believe in an old earth, it would indicate that one has not really understood the implication of millions-of-years-old rock layers with fossils in them and the biblical consequences. Is a faulty interpretation of the rocks or God’s Word going to be the ultimate authority for one’s faith? If Genesis is not real, literal history, how can one know where the truth actually does begin in Scripture? Placing our trust in man-made philosophies is reminiscent of the man that Jesus described in Matthew 7:26. Jesus said to him,
Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.
Conversely, in verses 24-25, He stated,
Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
